10th December 2025

10th December 2025


Pray (ACts)


Read (Exodus 20:17)


Message (Alan Burke)


I’ll start with a confession and I do this because I want you to understand that I’m not just pointing the finger at you and trying to make you feel wick about yourself. The thing is that there are many weeks that I sit in the study and as I’m preparing a passage of scripture it is pointing the finger at me and my sin and I’m feeling wick about myself. But that is what the word of God does, Hebrews 4:12 tells us; “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart”. So here is my confession I have far too many tweed jackets, 80% of them have been got from charity shops and I love a good bargain. I was in Newcastle in the summer and I got a Magee tweed jacket for £7, like that’s 98% off RRP. Anyway I have far too many and I know that but the sin in my heart means I desire more. 


I’m not alone in this, I suspect you are not too different than me. It may not be with tweed jackets but how many coats do you own? How many pairs of shoes? Maybe I’m just getting at the ladies but I suspect that our houses, garages, sheds are filled with stuff that we don’t need, that we bought in a whim, that we don’t get use out of. Like it’s raining right now as I write this so let me as how many coats do you have and how many of them can you wear at the same time? I get having 20 pairs of socks so you don’t have to do a wash every day but 20 coats? But you see I’m not just pointing the finger at you I’m doing it to myself I’ve far too many tweed jackets even if they were a bargain. 


The issue is that advertisers bombard us with fallacy that enjoyment of temporal pleasures give our life meaning. That fulfilling our covetousness will make us happy but we can only know true joy and fulfilment as we live according to the LORD’s design, living a life that is not based on things that will never truly satisfy us. The hope of a believer is not in what happens in day-to-day life, we may find pleasure in many things but our hope is ultimately in the Lord and his salvation. The tenth commandment forbids covetousness and requires from us contentment, contentment in our situation, with our lot, to be content with our status, with the life we have, in what we have, in who we are and contentment, is the remedy for covetousness. 


Whatever we face, we are in Christ and that is enough. For contentment is confidence in the Lord God, confidence that weather we are wealthy or poor, whether we are striving or suffering that what matters is that we are in Christ Jesus, he alone can give us the strength to face what we face, to resist temptations, that can give us contentment. Knowing that God is at work, in our lives, in the good times but also the hard times, and what we need to do is choose to trust in him for what we have, in what we face, whatever the circumstances. Contentment is about trusting and resting in the sovereignty and gracious purposes of the Lord. So are you content with what you have? Or is there something that is not yours that you covet? Instead we must look to the Lord Jesus more than this world that can never give us what we truly want or need only Christ Jesus can.


Pray (acTS)


Sing


WSC
Q41 Where is the moral law summarily comprehended?
A. The moral law is summarily comprehended in the ten commandments.
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